Saturday 8 November 2008

Pure comedy gold



Hot on the heels of the news that a new Wallace & Gromit is to grace our screens over the festering season comes news of the return of none other than Stanley Baxter!

Read more about the programme Stanley Baxter Now and Then

Probably even more so than Morecambe & Wise and Top of The Pops, the Stanley Baxter Show was the one show we would always look forward to at Xmas! You could rely upon Stanley - with his Hollywood pastiches and endless cross-dressing musical numbers - to provide the right balance of clever and hilarious comedy with glitz and sparkle.

Stanley Baxter learned his trade as part of the Combined Services Entertainment unit during National Service, alongside Kenneth Williams, John Schlesinger, Gordon Jackson and Peter Nichols. What a pedigree!

Never a great looker, he nevertheless transformed himself into these magnificent "ladies" before our eyes far more convincingly than, say, Danny LaRue (who was a bit too "me, me, me") or The Two Ronnies (who dragged up purely for the laughs). And not forgetting his brilliantly camp takes on Upstairs Downstairs and even HM The Queen...

As a child I loved him! (Says a lot in hindsight, really.)




Stanley Baxter biography

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